


revolutions.

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-04
Updated: 2008-01-26
Packaged: 2019-01-19 17:05:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12414345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: A collection of stories about the Next Generation at Hogwarts. Completely AU as of Deathly Hallows. In companion with Arianna Windwalker.





	1. antionette rosier

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

Wisdom in Whispers

 

Antoinette Rosier never thought she would be jealous of Althea fucking Lupin. She never thought she would be fighting tooth and nail to keep her perfect picture life with her picture perfect fianc. She never thought she would stoop to this level. Antoinette Rosier never thought she would do a lot of things, but here she is, standing outside a piece of crap flat in a piece of crap apartment in a piece of crap neighbourhood in a piece of crap Muggle London in a piece of crap life. 

Antoinette never thought she would be this desperate. 

She's always been the odd one out. Even when she was dating the boy, Lysander would leave her for his best friend, have wonderful conversations, laugh a lot and be happy. Antoinette never could find away to break the bond, or at least be accepted by it. And then she grew used to it, and started liking the times when it was just her and Lysander, and there was no Althea, and then she began winning the fight for his attention, and Althea's dark looks grew venomous and Antoinette tried to ignore them because she had won, even a little. 

Then they graduated, and Althea went away, and Antoinette thought she had won. And she had, for a little bit. But then Lysander joined the Aurors and Antoinette got her own flat and started working for the Daily Prophet, and something changed. Suddenly Antoinette was sixteen again, and she was one the outside of a relationship with an unknown entity and she knew, with the knowledge only a scorned woman could have, that she was completely fucked. 

She raises her hand to knock, but falters. She doesn't have the balls to beg. She's no Gryffindor; she's not brave. She's not _her_. She can't move, she's frozen with hear. 

But before she can turn away, before she can change her mind, before she can even think, the door swings open, and she's standing face to face with the object of all her hate and detestation over the years. She's looking into the eyes of the woman who is ruining her life, and all of a sudden Antoinette can't breathe. They don't say anything for several seconds, each staring at her rival. Antoinette, blond and frail and wearing the best of her Muggle attire; Althea, dark, scrawny and wearing a pale yellow uniform. So different, and so desperate, both of them. 

"What do you want?" Cold, harsh, confused.

"Can I talk to you?" Monotonous, anticipatory, scared shitless. 

The other girl doesn't say anything, but steps back to expose the tiny, crumbling apartment. Again, there is silence as Antoinette steps into the confines of the flat, and feels claustrophobic in the mass of half-finished papers, dirty dishes, pink-ish laundry and broken springs from what she can only assume used to be a chair. The other woman doesn't make a move to show her around, so Antoinette walks over to the linoleum table and looks down at the nearest paper, where words have been scribbled hastily in a reoccurring pattern, if only for something to do. 

"What do you want?" she repeats, this time with a dangerous edge in her voice. 

Antoinette turns to face her, and wonders what does she want? She wants a lot of things. She wants Lysander to be hers, she wants a white wedding, with yellow orchids and irises and she wants her father to be better and she wants to dress like a Muggle all the time, and she wants things to go back to the way they were when she was a child, with her, her brother and the rest of the big bad world safely locked behind closed doors, and she wants Althea to just go away and she wants her happily ever after and she wants happiness and she wants to do something, and she really, really wants a smoke. 

But she doesn't say any of this. Instead, she reaches into her purse, takes out a cigarette, and lights it with her golden lighter and inhales the charcoal smoke and tries to think. She knows she doesn't have much time, because there's a nerve twitching in Althea's eyes, and just for a moment, Antoinette thinks about school, and sees an echo of what it used to be. 

"I wanted to talk to you," she says slowly, taking another drag on the cigarette to stall for him. "I wanted to ask you a favour." 

"What do you need me for?" The girl shoots back, glancing at the clock on the wall. She's late, Antoinette and tell, and she feels a rush of guilt for wasting her time, and tries to summon the courage to continue. 

"I need to stop whatever you're doing with my fianc." She doesn't say his name; she can't bear to humanize it. She keeps him at arms length, puts him on a pedestal to save herself from the pain he'll inflict upon her. She wonders if Althea can hear the secret pleads in her voice, if she can understand what it took for her to come here, if she can comprehend the half-formed thoughts and terrors that have been haunting her for the better part of the past three years. 

Althea is silent, and Antoinette is silent, and together they are silent, thinking. Antoinette is restless; she shits her weight, and taps her cigarette, and plays with her hair, and watches Althea, waiting for her to speak. But the woman says nothing, and soon Antoinette is speaking again. She can't believe she's saying these things, these half-formed thoughts that have haunted her for the better part of the past three years. But now that she's started, she can't stop, and the words come pouring out of her, and she's saying things that she never knew she felt. 

"I know you've left the Wizarding World, I know that it's been hard for you, what with your - your father's --- problem. But I notice things. He still - he loves you. And he might love me, I don't know. But I know that I love him, and that he will never love me while he loves you. So if you're not going to do anything, then at least let me have him. . I can't live like this any longer, and I can't fucking believe I'm talking to you, but I love him, and I need him, because I don't know what I'll do without him. I've spent years trying to get him, trying to marry him. Do you know how many other men I've turned down to get him? Do you know how much effort I put into him? Because I love him, and I'm nothing without him, and oh god. I am so pathetic." 

She laughs, then, a hallow, shallow laugh that fills the tiny apartment, and makes her want to cry. She's shaking and takes another drag on the cigarette to steady her fired nerves. When she finishes, she can't stop another chortle, and it expels from her chest with a rush of smoke, and then, to her surprise, another laugh joins her, and Althea is laughing, and they're both gasping for breath and leaning onto broken bits of furniture. 

"Merlin," Althea gasps, "you are pathetic." 

And that just sets them off again, laughing and then crying, and soon Antoinette has no more energy and her stomach aches and her cigarette is out. She looks at Althea, and sees an independent woman, a woman she could never be. Althea looks back, and Antoinette doesn't know what she sees. 

(She sees a blonde woman, trapped in a life that doesn't make sense, and who she can't quite bring herself to hate anymore.)

Antoinette gets up, straightens her skirt and doesn't know what to do. She feels like she should say something, but can't find the words. 

"I-" Althea begins, but Antoinette shakes her head. 

"No," she says, and smiles. She lights another cigarette and nods at the door. "I'll see myself out?"

"Sure," Althea replies, and Antoinette walks out the door, and climbs down the rusted staircase and doesn't stop walking until she's turned the corner, and then she starts to cry. 

(She breaks up with Lysander a week later, moves to America as a journalist and for once in her life is more than just a Pureblooded vessel for reproduction. She never speaks to Althea again.) 


	2. lysander malfoy

Blue to Blue

 

He's thirteen, he's a Malfoy, and he thinks he's in love with his best friend. 

Well, kind of. Mostly he's scared of her, which is almost as confusing as being in love with her. He doesn't know why she scares him - because she does, she really, really does. She's just so on-again/off-again, hot and cold, fire and ice. One day she'll be cheerfully finishing Herbology notes, and the next she'll be screaming at him to renounce his pureblood ways. Everything about her is so goddamned extravagant and larger than life. She's a force of nature, something to be reckoned with. She's scary. And Lysander would rather die than admit it, but it's true, and it makes him blush when it's just the two of them, and she smiles.

But then she yells and screams and makes him go bang and it's normal again, and sometimes Lysander doesn't know which one is worse. 

He's fifteen, he's in Slytherin, and it's not like he thinks about it all the time.

He doesn't think about her when he corners Jacqueline Nott, and they slowly seduce each other in a mixture of teenaged angst, family duty and hormones. He doesn't think of her when Jacqueline's lips are against his, and he's trying to figure out how to kiss like he's done it before when he hasn't, and he's trying to figure out if all girls taste like pumpkin juice and sugar-mints, and if her hand is supposed to be there, or if he's supposed to moan, or whatnot. He doesn't think about her when he smirks and takes his leave, like he meant to leave her hanging. But for some reason he never tells Althea about Jacqueline, and never bothers to justify it. 

(In Slytherin nothing is a secret for long, and when she finds out, Althea hexes Nott's bag so that it had the word "SLUT" written in rhinestones.)

He's sixteen, finally, and a Prefect, and everything is wrong. 

She starts dating some idiot of a Hufflepuff, and he's unbelievably jealous and enraged. He says it's because he's an idiot, and she says it's because he's a Muggleborn, and he says he doesn't care what blood he was, he could be as pure of bloody Merlin for all he cares, but that doesn't make him an idiot, and Althea tells him that Merlin was a Muggleborn, and he's taken a step forward and is seconds away from kissing her when he stops dead and can't breathe. (Because it's wrong, that's what it is. . Everything about it is wrong. It's incestuous, and dirty.) But then he storms out, finds the first vaguely attractive girl he can, and throws himself at her. 

Antoinette Rosier is confused, but secretly pleased, and smugly thinks that she got the Malfoy. 

And then he's seventeen, and months away from graduating and he's terrified of her.

They never speak about the future. It's one of those unspoken rules they've never broken. It's something better left for cold and rainy nights, when the clouds threaten existence, and the forest glows ominously, and the fires are cold and dead, and he's alone on the topmost tower, and thinks about throwing himself off because he can't imagine a life without her, but can't figure out how to make it happen. He can't imagine not fighting with her every day, or throwing things at her in class, or writing bizarre notes in iambic pentameter just to make her smile. But he also can't fit her into his picture. He'll have an apartment in downtown London, he'll have a job at some magical corporation, and he'll have a sleek eagle owl and a marble fireplace, and he'd be ashamed to let her see it. 

But graduation is closer and closer, and he knows he doesn't have much time. And Antoinette has been dropping large hints about a possible marriage, and his mother loves the girl, and Lysander doesn't dislike her. She's very nice and pretty and smart, but she lacks a certain fire, and a certain reckless abandon. She's boring. She's plain. She's expected.

He realizes, as he stands on top of the North Tower, looking at the foreboding sky, that he is boring. He's plain. He's expected. He doesn't have a war to fight, or a Dark Lord to please, or a world to save. He doesn't have war stories, or adventures. He doesn't even have family drama like - oh god - the Weasleys. 

He's just a Malfoy, without a fight.

He's eighteen, enrolled in the Auror Training Programme and he discovers that there is life outside of Hogwarts. 


	3. lysander malfoy

All You Need

Lysander isn't sure about anything anymore. 

At school, he knew everything. He knew, if not who he was, then at least what he was. He was a Malfoy, a Slytherin, a brunette, a Prefect, a Chaser. He was younger brother to Scoripus, son to Draco and Juliet, related to most of Slytherin, rival of Lily Potter and Hugo Weasley, boyfriend to Antoinette Rosier, best friend to Althea Fawcett. At school, he had it all figured out: his uniform, his robes, his books, his hair. Everything. 

Now, though, he's twenty-one, fresh out of Auror Training Programme, he has to stop the illegal trafficking of Powered Dragon's Horn, and he's working with _Rose fucking Weasley_ , and he has no idea if witness sightings should be filed under On-Going Investigations or Outside Authority, and his fiance walked out on him and he doesn't actually know how to iron, and his mother sent him Tupperware for his birthday, and his flat is an absolutely mess and Antoinette left a bloody note. 

When he was training, it was all so simple. He got the grades, did the work, and his father was proud because he was making a good impression on society, and his mother worried because it could be dangerous, and Scorpius, well. Scorpius never says anything that isn't a hidden metaphor or a veiled threat. He likes to think that Scorpius is proud. It makes it a little easier to deal with. He can't concentrate on anything anymore. Nothing makes sense. He doesn't know how to file taxes, he can't cook, he can't function properly in society, and he doesn't even know what the proper procedure is for a house arrest in Northern Ireland. All he can think about are her goddamn eyes and her goddamn hair and the scent of her goddamn perfume that she left in his freaking bathroom. 

Malfoys are infallible. They don't _do_ emotion, and when they do, they at least have the dignity to take it out on some poor defenceless Muggle. But things have changed in the past ten years, and the families of old are trying to keep up. The cold-blooded elite no longer rule from the shadows, and it's hard to wear silver and green when world is painted gold and red. 

So, he is allowed one night. One night to be human; one night to suffer. Nobody floos him, or owls him, or bothers him. His friends know enough to stay away, and even his parents have been silent. The only interaction he's had since he left the Ministry that afternoon was when Scorpius knocked on his door, handed him a bottle of the finest whiskey gold can buy, and left without a word.

He only needs one night. After tonight - after he gets drunk, looks at pictures of her and laments his loss and confusion - he'll be okay. He'll be strong, and he can face the world with the smirk. He'll get over Annie, he'll figure out his job and everything can go back to the way it should be. He'll figure it out. 

But until then, his only friend on the cold, November night was a bottle of Firewhiskey, and he needs to torture himself just a little more. He stumbles over to the leather sofa, picks up the letter from the coffee table and stares at it through blurry eyes. 

She broke up with him in a note and he's had to deal with the aftermath. There were deposits on the cathedral, and money on the dress robes, and his grandparents were flooing in from America, and all of Pureblood society was anticipating the union between a Malfoy and a Rosier, the perfect match. Silver and green, generations back. Whispers follow him now, old women gossiping as he enters the Leaky, and interns staring in the Ministry, and Rose Weasley's fucking sympathy. 

He is sitting on his sofa, feeling about as un-Malfoy-like as possible. He was pathetic; he really was, wallowing in his misery, making himself look as pathetic as possible. If his brother were to walk in, he would see a crumpled, useless shadow of a former being, and quite legitimately be horrified. But his brother isn't here; he's off in his nice flat just off of Marcellous Avenue, drinking his nice scotch and talking politics with his nice friends and being happy and nice and it makes Lysander so god damn angry. 

His hands are shaking with the effort to read and drink at the same time. The whiskey is doing its job, giving everything a sort of glow and tinge around the sides, making the words blur together on the page. The elegant slant for the script, the lines for dots, and the hastily scribbled signature. It is perfect. How Annie, this note; she must have made several copies, just to get it right. She was immaculate; she was perfect in almost every way. She used to tie and re-tie his tie every time he left for work, and it annoyed him to no end. 

Now, though, he had only five meagre sentences left of her, and it's probably his fault. She never says so, not in so many words, but he can sense the hidden messages beneath the ink. 

_"I'm sorry, I have to do this, but I can't go on living like this."_  
(I'm not sorry at all, you deserve this, you poor fuck.)  
 _"There is no blame on either you, or me."_  
(it's all your fault.)  
 _"I just don't think it's right for us to be married."_  
(I hate you.)  
 _"I think in time you'll agree that it was for the best."_  
(after you waste your life mourning your loss.)  
 _"I love you."_  
(I love you.)

He sits, staring at the piece of paper, and realizes that he's completely fucked up. Sometime, somewhere, between the proposal and last week, he made a huge mistake. She's left him, and as much as Lysander hates to admit, he's mostly upset because she left him. He's never been dumped before, never been rejected. He's always been the one to leave the girls, the one to make them beg. Well, he muses sardonically, as he drains the last of his glass and goes to refill it, Lady Fate certainly timed her revenge properly. 

Shock - he thought Annie loved him. He thought she was clingy! If she had wanted to throw him off, well, she got her wish. He was left stumbling around his empty fragment of a life and she was off going... somewhere, her parents refused to tell him, refused to let him talk to her. He wasn't about to plead for her to come back - oh no, he still had some fragments of dignity in tact - but he just wanted a proper explanation. A real reason, none of that bullshit she had left for him to read. 

And he loved her, he thinks, reclining on the couch, staring into the dead coals of his fireplace. In his own weird, twisted way, he really did love her. She was smart enough, and practical. Maybe marrying would have been a mistake, but he feels the ache of her absence strongly, and it's so confusing it hurts. It hurts to be alone.  


He sits up and reaches for the whiskey.

(Antoinette, hundreds of thousands of miles away, was staring at her apartment in New York City, wondering what the hell was she was doing.)

The next day, when he arrives to the Manor Sunday brunch, his eyes have dark shadows underneath them, his breath reeks, his hair is messy and he's wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and nobody says anything. 


	4. slytherins

**prologue** _for the_ damned  
(everyone has secrets. slytherins just have more.)  
(lysander malfoy, pippa derrick, theodore nott III, althea fawcett, violet zabini, simon wood, afton zabini, callidora montague, judah summer, silas warrington, allegra vaisey, cassiopeia flint)  


**10**.  
The first night they were at school, Pippa Derrick, Althea Fawcett, Violet Zabini, Callidora Montague, Allegra Vaisey and Cassiopeia Flint stayed up until 1 am making a list who they thought was the cutest boy in their year. At the beginning and end of every where since then, they got together and updated the list. 

**9.**  
They still do it, every January 2nd and September 1st, only now they giggle over red wine and black coffee and Althea isn't there anymore. 

**8.**  
Simon almost ran away when he was sorted into Slytherin with his pseudo-half-siblings, Violet and Afton, because they scared him so much. He thought they would hate him because they shared a half-sister-from-hell. But instead Afton took the bed near the window and asked Simon if he was coming over with Portia for Christmas, and Simon decided that Hogwarts was going to be okay after all. 

**7.**  
Lysander Malfoy was terrified of Peeves, after Judah and Althea, in their second year, dared him to throw chalk at the poltergeist, who then chased Lysander over four stories, and who only escaped when he discovered the Room of Requirement. 

**6.**  
Pippa Derrick had a crush on Lysander until their fourth year, and never told anyone, because she knew they would tell him. 

**5.**  
Allegra Vaisey found a crumbled love-letter addressed to the youngest Malfoy under Pippa's bed, in the third year, and never told anyone. 

**4.**  
Theodore Nott III was only sorted into Slytherin because he threatened to burn the Hat if it put him in Hufflepuff. The Hat chuckled, and shouted SLYTHERIN, before saying, "You'd make a better friend than snake." 

**3.**  
Judah Summer was a Muggleborn and spent most of his first year reading every book on Wizarding culture just to avoid anyone finding out. As a result, he knew more about 1970s pop music than anyone else in the year.  
(They figured it out during Christmas, and the boys decided to give Judah a crash-course in Pureblood culture before the Montague's annual Christmas party.) 

**2.**  
Lysander and Violet lost their virginity to each other when they were 16 and absolutely hammered. Lysander still lives in fear of Afton's wrath. 

**1.**  
The day after the fight, Althea and Judah went out for coffee, and Althea cried for the first time in front of a fellow Slytherin. Judah gave her the name of his cousin who had an apartment he wanted to sub-let and got her a job at the restaurant his aunt worked at.


	5. althea fawcet

She feels like someone lit a fire inside of her stomach, but in a good way. She's standing on her balcony, and looking out at the city, and it's only 4:30, but the sun is already setting, but she feels so amazingly good. She can't quite understand it, except that it feels like someone changed the air, and pushed her off a cliff, and even then, it doesn't really make much sense. She's breathing heavily polluted air, but everything feels fresh and brilliant. She's standing at the edge of a cliff, feeling absolutely terrified, yet somehow, she knows she will be fine. 

That's it, really. She knows - she doesn't know how, can't explain why - that everything is _going to be okay_. It doesn't matter that she doesn't know it's possible, or how she knows, or really, what okay is. She just knows that everything will be fine. Fine. Alright. Okay. It's a swell of hope and optimism that she's never felt before, and doesn't know what to do about. She feels like she should do something - play the lottery, make an investment, get a new job - but instead she just stands on the balcony and looks and feels.

Everything is going to be fine, just fine.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:** Technically this doesn't necessarily have  anything to do with Harry Potter, but I wrote it with Althea in mind, and liked it, so I figured, why not post? It's not like any of these stories are canon, anyway.   



	6. chloe longbottom

this is how it works

 a character sketch of chloe longbottom.  


**Prompt:** _a Longbottom; "This is how it works, you're young until you're not  
you love until you don't, you try until you can't"_

 

 

Chloe is different than the others. The other girls have the look of starved circus lions - desperate and hungry, abused and broken. Their smiles are feeble, their eyes are hallow. Not Chloe, though. The sparkle in her eyes is bright, and her smile is coy, and her waist is smooth. Her laugh rings out throughout the club, bright and clear, as she shimmies away from the bachelors, followed by a hailstorm of gold coins. 

The customers love her. Love that she dances out of their reach, that she gives them fleeting hints of humanity in the smoky club. They love that she dehumanizes their acts, that she is more than just a limp rag in their hands. They love her sharp tongue and her coy wit. They love her breasts. 

The other girls can't hate her; no matter how hard they try. Chloe is an enigma. She doesn't judge, she doesn't talk much about anything important. She jokes, and she smiles. She doesn't talk about her own traumas, or her own horror stories. She sympathises with the girls with abusive boyfriends who like their wands a little too much. She ignores the white powder and the sniffles and shakes. She dresses, she smiles, she dances, she undresses, she dresses again, and she leaves. Never gets close enough to be burned. Never strays too far away. 

They all know who she is - the renegade daughter of a war hero, the only black mark on the family name - but if they have an opinion, they don't voice it her. They know she loves her son more than life itself, a common trait among young mothers who strip. Her sharp tongue, so useful on way-ward patrons, or wizards with roaming hands, can easily be used against the others, and, besides, nobody really trusts each other in the Phoenix's Den. It's too easy to grab your wand and panic. It's safer to smile and pretend that everything is fine. 

But they do whisper. Her name, and her son, mentioned by the floor manager in a moment of weakness, spreads like wildfire throughout the club, to the bar where they all hang out, to the bedrooms where her boyfriends scream it, to the Leaky Cauldron, to the shops in the Alley, where it is told through whispers and shocked silences and knowing looks, aboard the Hogwarts Express, upon owls headed to Scotland, where it settles on Neville Longbottom's doorstep, and where it all comes crashing down around him. 

Somehow, Chloe remains blissfully unaware for weeks, until she gets a letter from her sister in Wales. The parchment has been torn by the pressure of the quill, and the ink is blood red with angry, and as she reads it, Chloe feels sick to her stomach. Shame, horror - how could you do this to us, your family? - the more she reads, the more she wants to vomit. 

So Chloe does what any nice and fucked up girl would do. She hires a babysitter, goes to the pub, gets wasted, goes home with a strange boy with green eyes, and gets lost in his arms. That's how she met Judah, a nice Jewish Muggle who in no way has any relation to the Wizarding world. 

(Or so she thinks, until she glances at the society papers and sees those damn green eyes.)

She ends up at his apartment, and somewhere between taking off her bra and falling into bed, tells him that she has shamed her family by becoming a stripper after they kicked her out because she got pregnant before she took her NEWTs and kept the baby. Judah, the nice man, who is Jewish, but also a wizard, has a friend who needs a roommate and who loves kids. 

That's how she met Althea Fawcett, who is more fucked up than Chloe is. 

That's how she met the Malfoys and the Notts and the Zabinis. That's how she somehow ends up in the midst of Pureblood society, smiling at wizards in dress robes, whispering with witches in cocktail dresses, holding onto Silas' hand, and smiling in the face and scandal. 

That's how everything changed. 


	7. astoria malfoy nee greengrass

The Witching Hour

Most Muggle folklore often has its roots in the Wizarding  
World. Werewolves, vampires, demons and, of course, witches, are all that  
remains of the times when those with magic blood dwelled among those without.  
Time, combined with humanityÕs inability to co-exist with those different and  
strange, saw a rift between those people, until one was forced into hiding. The  
symbolism attached to ordinary objects, that seem to have no other meaning than  
their definitions, is a product of Wizarding thoughts and ideas. Without Magic,  
Muggles would have no science. Without wizards, Muggles would have no art. It  
is written in the past, the way the stars are written upon the sky, and it is  
written in the very blood that flows through their veins.

The old families – the ones who sat on thrones, who  
dressed in silk and diamonds, who drank from gold cups – they remember.  
Their homes remember, and their crests remember, and their blood remembers.

Blood. Blood  
was the start of all of it. The blood which flows through my veins, and which  
flows through yours, and which flows through my sonsÕ, and my husbandÕs, and my  
motherÕs, and my loverÕs - that blood was the cause of it all. Genetics, the  
Muggleborn says. Genetics and science, and DNA and facts and reports, and  
chemistry and laboratories – the Muggleborns say that it is a mutation, a  
string of sequences that miss a beat, a line of poetry one syllable too long,  
that is the only difference. So small that you canÕt see it with magic, and  
yet, so important that it has caused hundreds upon thousands upon millions of  
deaths. It is our blood, and it is the blood that remembers. 

My family is not as old as that of my husbandÕs. We went  
aboard a ship, from England, to the new world, with promises of gold and silver  
and riches and land. We were one of hundreds of witches and wizards, all  
searching for a land to call our own. (Salem was only the beginning.) We  
fought, and fought hard, we did what we had to do. The blood, the old blood,  
was lost, and diluted; the money was spent and wasted; the land was burnt and  
destroyed. We were no more kings than the Muggles beside us, and none of our  
kin would marry our sons and daughters. We did what we had to do. 

My husband – no. His family never fell upon hard  
times, save the bloody wars and the riots and the peasant revolts, which were  
hard enough, for them, I suppose.  
The Malfoys, oh, what a sight that would have been, to see them in all  
their glory, dancing next to Queens, and courting Princes, their tell-tale hair  
– almost silver in hue – done up in the latest fashions, their  
waists bound and their collars high. They would have been a sight, I think.  
Merlin, I _know_ – I have seen the  
portraits, which dance when youÕre not looking, and who hang, one by one, three  
by three, along the walls of this dreaded mansion. 

They mock me when they think I am not listening. They tell  
my husband the truth. They tell him my story, and past, and there is no  
silencing these wicked beings. All I can do is hope and pray (and curse and  
burn) the creatures that would ruin everything. 

I cannot tell my husband. Draco is a loving man, in his own  
way, but he would not believe me. He would ignore me, I think, or worse, think  
me mad. To be ignored is one thing. To be patronized and subjugated and hospitalized  
as another. Besides. What would I tell him? That he cannot walk along the Hall  
of Ancestry because the portraits will tell him a secret? It would be foolish.  
It would be deadly. No, Draco can not know a thing. 

Women have done this for over five thousand years. We have  
stood in the shadows and used our smiles and our breasts to change the man. We  
have waited our time, patiently poured tea and silently made changes and  
whispered suggestions under the moonlight. These woman fought for power, and I  
can protect my position. There is no fear.

Or is there?

There is safety in numbers. Two by two, four by four, there  
is safety in the wholeness and the roundness of numbers. I have lived my life  
by these numbers, looking to them for protection. It takes thirty-two steps to  
reach the bedroom from the drawing room, fifty-eight minutes to knit a scarf,  
sixty seconds in a minute, six hundred, seventy-four years of history in this  
house. I have 18 moles on my body. I have two sons, two brothers, two parents,  
two lives. Numbers keep me safe. 


	8. mattie montague

let it burn

We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time. -Jack Kerouac

**{ one.**  
The air tastes like freedom. Freedom, she learns, tastes of cotton candy and smoke and sugar. The air tastes of freedom and the wind is brisk and the sky is clear as the world places aside their grief for a moment and takes a moment to be alive. Around her they are singing and dancing and rejoicing - enemies are embracing, lovers are kissing, strangers are laughing. 

She watches it from the hotel room balcony and yearns to be part of the crowd, the chaotic mass of common happiness. She craves the frantic motion, the reckless abandon, the hysteria, the madness. She itches to reach out and join in the crowd, to stop thinking, stop analysing, stop planning and just live for a moment.

Behind her, she hears a door, opening and closing, and feels a pair of thin, strong arms wrapping around her waist. His breath is on her neck, his lips against her pulse, and when she turns around, she tastes freedom. 

**{two.**  
The child is brought into the world, kicking and screaming, amidst screams of agony and despair. Her hair is dripping in sweat, her make-up is running and she is trembling and sobbing. She doesn't know where her husband is. He floo'd her mother when the pains started, and took leave; his job had ended eight and a half months ago. Maybe he's in the sitting room, sipping a drink and reading the paper, or maybe in his office, writing a letter to some wealthy investor or another, or perhaps at the club, drinking with his friends, who nod knowingly when he tells them. Regardless, she is left alone with only her sister, her mother and the old mediwitch. Astoria is looking faint, and keeps rubbing her own stomach, dreading the time when it will be her screaming. Her mother purses her lips and flips the page of a magazine. The witch adds rosemary to the purple concoction in the goblet. 

It is pronounced a girl and placed into the exhausted woman's arms. It cries, it's tiny face ugly and pinched, grasping for milk and a mother's love. She names the child Mattie and never tells him why. 

**{three.**  
Mattie is five and Dorian is three and she decides to take them to Diagon Alley. Astoria has wanted to escape her mansion and her mother-in-law for days, and she needs new robes for Mattie, so she grasps their hands tightly, wraps herself in a cloak, tucks in Dorian's shirt and brushes Mattie's hair and steps into the fire. It is the first time either of the children have travelled by floo, and they shriek, a mixture of fear and delight. 

She sees him outside Florean Fortescue's, leaning against the wall and sipping a lattee and staring at her. For one second the world stops turning and she can't more, or breath or think. He stares back and they stand there, staring for what feels like an eternity. 

But then Mattie runs at her and demands to be picked up. Numbly, she obliges, and he physically recoils. She tries to explain, tries to justify, tries to apologize, but no words come out of her mouth, and she just rests Mattie on her hip. Mattie stares at the stranger and asks, "Mummy, who is that man looking at us?"

"Nobody, darling," she whispers, "just a Muggleborn. Nobody at all."

**{four.**  
Mattie is sorted into Gryffindor, and her husband is furious. He paces and he thunders and he yells and she sits in the study, flipping through a magazine. Adrian can't understand her apathy, her compliance. His anger is dark and boils under the surface, threatening to explode at any point. She is sitting in his study, flipping through a magazine, watching her husband as he threatens to explode and feels a rush of pride and warmth for her daughter. 

"How can you be so calm?" He rages, turning on his wife.

She looks up from last month's copy of Witch Weekly and stares him directly in the eyes, "Because, my dear," she says soft, slowly, "this is the best thing that has happened to our family in centuries."

He gapes at her, mouth hanging open. He splutters, "What? How could--?" 

Before his anger returns, she cuts in. 

"Matilda's sorting gives you the legitimacy you need in the new Ministry. Don't be na•ve, Adrian, do you really think you're going to be on the Board without a Weasley's support? A daughter in Gryffindor is proof that this family isn't dark." She looked pointedly towards his forearm and stood, "A Gryffindor will give us protection under Shaklebolt."

"And if - if the Dark Lord, or some other, rises again?" He was calm now, the logic of her words pacifying his rage.

"Then it is a regrettable mistake, a flaw in our family tree." 

**{five.**  
Mattie sits on her crimson bed sheets, watching her dorm mates as they chatter and unpack their things. Her trunk lays at her feet, unopened, untouched. She doesn't want to have to pack it again, since she'll be gone by morning. Her father will demand a re-Sorting, or disown her, or something, and she'll have to spend the rest of her life in a nunnery in Wales. 

Mattie is so busy lamenting her poor luck of "having what it takes" that she doesn't notice Lucy until it is too late. A red-haired girl collapses on the bed next to her, and begins to kick off her shoes. "I'm Lucy," she says, and extends a brightly nailed hand towards Mattie, "Lucy Weasley."

"Mattie Montague," she responds, shaking the other girls hand lightly. 

"Hi, Mattie." Lucy sits up on her bed, cross-legged. "Have you heard of Hogwarts before? My cousins have been here for ages already, and my entire family's been in Gryffindor since forever..."

Lucy carried on, talking about top-speed for the better part of the night. After an hour, the other girls joined in, sitting on the beds, the five of them sharing stories of Hogwarts' secrets. 

Mattie starts to unpack her trunk. 


End file.
